Sergio Leone – an Italian who invented America

Gazzetta Italia

By Mateusz Wyderka

June 2, 2024

Leone is often called the “king of the spaghetti western”. However, I believe that this is an incomplete image to say the least. “I am the wind”, sang Arturo Testa in 1959 during the Sanremo Festival. In my opinion, Sergio Leone, born 30 years earlier, on January 3, 1929, was truly a wind. A breeze whose numerous gusts have permanently changed the cinematic landscape.

Testa came second in the festival rankings at the time. I have the impression that it was a bit like this also for the career of the Roman director who, despite being one of the greatest and most influential directors of all time, for those of the Academy didn't even deserve an Oscar nomination. Next April 30th will be the 35th anniversary of Sergio Leone's death. Only today can we fully appreciate the contribution that the director gave to world cinema.

Leone's filmography is rather short. He began by assisting Vittorio de Sica in “Bicycle Thieves” (1948). He then worked on, among others, Quo Vadis (1951) and Ben Hur (1959), in the meantime also writing his own screenplays. The opportunity came in 1959, when he replaced Mario Bonnard, director of "The Last Days of Pompeii". Two years later he made “The Colossus of Rhodes”, his first independent feature film. But real fame came after the making of “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964), starring Clint Eastwood. “Without a doubt the strong point of this film, which was a resounding success in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, is the character of the bounty killer played by Clint Eastwood, the American actor who had previously played the role of an drover in the television series Rawhide”, wrote the New York Times a few years after the premiere. Eastwood also starred in the subsequent films of the so-called “Dollar Trilogy”: “For a Few Dollars More” (1965) and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1966). It can be said that it was Leone who discovered Eastwood's talent, also showing his range of action.

“I heard about Sergio Leone for the first time when I saw “A Fistful of Dollars”. I saw that it was a great film, but the critics didn't appreciate it. In Italy they didn't understand Sergio, they didn't like him. They began to understand it much later, with his last film, but it was too late,” wrote Dario Argento in 2009 in the pages of the British The Guardian.

Initially, critics received Leone's film rather negatively. The scandal surrounding accusations of plagiarism of Akira Kurosawa's "The Bodyguard" (1961) also contributed to this. The Japanese director went to court and won the case. The Italian admitted that he had been inspired, but did not believe he had plagiarized.

With hindsight, however, we can say that it turned out just fine. Both sides benefited. Kurosawa received financial profit from this and his films attracted greater interest. Leone, on the other hand, built something very important, a genre in its own right, based on someone else's idea, while at the same time discovering Eastwood's talent. The same happened with Ennio Morricone. The composer considered today one of the greatest of all time. It was the “dollar” films that showed the scope of the Roman artist's talent, allowing him to work with the best directors, inspiring generations of filmmakers. “I grew up listening to The Ecstasy of Gold,” underlined Quentin Tarantino.

It should be noted that, during the first days of working on the film, it was discovered that Leone and Morricone had known each other since childhood, as they both attended the San Giovanni elementary school in Rome.

“We met at the age of seven, I think in the third year of primary school, but then we never met again. Only later, when I was at my house writing the music for his film "A Fistful of Dollars", which he asked me to do after listening to the soundtracks I had written for two previous western films. He liked my music and was convinced of this collaboration,” Ennio Morricone recalled years later.

Some critics believe that it is Morricone's music that makes Leone's films special. It's hard to disagree, but this is not to diminish Leone's work. A director's job is, among other things, to find the right people and give them the space to show all their talent. Sergio Leone did exactly that, he allowed the exceptional artists he found to show the fullness of their uniqueness. A way of working that characterizes only the greatest. Morricone also composed the music for Leone's subsequent films: “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) with Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson, “Giù la testa” (1971) with James Coburn and the magnum opus of Italian director, “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984).

At the beginning of the Seventies, they proposed that Leone film “The Godfather” (1972). He refused because he didn't want to glorify the mafia. However, he later regretted his decision. In the end, the film based on Mario Puzo's novel was made by Coppola so brilliantly that I personally don't mind that Leone didn't make it. Plus if he had actually made “The Godfather,” maybe he wouldn't have made “Once Upon a Time in America,” a film described as a “Jewish Godfather,” which, incidentally, the director didn't like very much. This is not a gangster movie. Indeed, it is a surreal film about memory, about the passage of time, about nostalgia. “It is also a tribute to cinema with notes of my pessimism,” confessed the director a few years after the premiere. Leone takes us back to America in the 1920s, showing the story of five boys growing up in a Jewish neighborhood in New York. The film, starring Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGoven, Jennifer Connelly and Joe Pesci, is today recognized as one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of cinema.

In 1989 he began preparing a film about the siege of Leningrad. However, a few days before signing the contract, he suffered a heart attack. He died on April 30 at just 60 years old. In 2022, the documentary on his life was released, entitled "Sergio Leone: the Italian who invented America".